


I'm Still Breathing (though we've been dead for a while)

by this_is_the_hard_bit



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, Future Fic, M/M, Re-titled nearly two years after the fact
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-03
Updated: 2013-09-03
Packaged: 2017-12-25 12:08:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/952905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/this_is_the_hard_bit/pseuds/this_is_the_hard_bit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not like there's someone else. Liam just stopped loving. It wasn't a conscious decision. There was no point where he decided to lock down his heart. It was more like a slow, imperceptible leak, from a tyre, from a balloon, from a dam the size of Texas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm Still Breathing (though we've been dead for a while)

**Author's Note:**

> Well, you've got to start somewhere, right? This is my first fic here (so be nice!) and I figure I could fiddle with it endlessly and try to work all the cliches out or I could just get it posted and out of my system and move on to the next thing and hopefully improve.  
> This is just one great big ball of angst. I'm sorry for that but it is what it is.  
> Oh yeah, if you see any errors, feel free to point them out because I'm pretty anal about things like that and I'd rather not post work with mistakes in.
> 
> Edit: Almost two years on, and I finally came up with the right title for this piece! My apologies to those of you who knew it as 'A Chest to Rise, A Lung to Fill', which was grammatically incorrect anyway, now that I think about it. It should have been raise, not rise. I think that has been niggling away at the back of my brain for a long time. 
> 
> So, anyway, I was listening to old Katy Perry the other day and this track came on and I realised it's perfect for this fic. And it was right in front of me the whole time.

_Soft..._

In the darkness of the room, that's the first sensation Liam registers as he slides into his side of the bed. The brushed cotton sheets are soft against his skin, and it should be soothing, but they're cold as well.

He snuggles deeper, moving carefully, not wanting to wake the bed's other occupant, but needing to creep closer to that warmth. He accidentally touches his arm against an elbow, nudges it unwittingly, and there is a flinch and a shifting of position, a sudden starting away, as if stung by a live wire.

“What took you so long?” Zayn's voice is sleepy and a little petulant.

There is a loud quiet. Liam hasn't really got an answer, not one worth sharing anyway, so he says nothing.

“I waited for you.” Zayn's voice is more subdued this time, quieter, a little wistful, and Liam can hear the words unsaid, can hear the implied accusation. _“I wanted to have sex with you tonight. I waited up for you. But it got late and you didn't come, so I turned out the light. Don't you love me anymore?”_

Another silence. This one stretches on, finally broken by the sound of gentle snoring. Liam exhales, feeling like he'd never actually breathed in, and turns over, moves closer to the edge of the bed.

It takes a long time for his muscles to completely relax, and even then he is nowhere near ready to fall asleep. Over and over in his mind, he can hear those words repeating. The words Zayn didn't actually say, didn't speak aloud, but they hang in the air anyway.

_“Don't you love me anymore?”_

And the simple, honest truth is that Liam doesn't. He hasn't for a while now and he doesn't know what to do about it, how to go about breaking the heart of the sleeping lion beside him.

It's not like there's someone else. Liam just stopped loving. It wasn't a conscious decision. There was no point where he decided to lock down his heart. It was more like a slow, imperceptible leak, from a tyre, from a balloon, from a dam the size of Texas.

(He recalls, once, thinking that his heart would surely burst, so full was it with love, but it didn't burst, it just swelled and grew and he laughed to think that his body could even contain it.)

But when he looks inside himself now, the dam is empty and dry and he can't even rustle up enough sense of feeling to be sorry or sad. He just wants it to be over, wants to get away from the feeling that he's choking, drowning, unable to breathe, and the distinct sensation that he's not the only one, that he's pulling Zayn down with him and they're both thrashing helplessly in this relationship that is devoid of air.

Liam closes his eyes and tries to remember. Tries to think back to a time when the touch of Zayn’s hand against his skin was what he lived and breathed for, back to a time when it seemed as if his skin was in a constant state of over-sensitivity and every graze, every scrape, every glancing blow, the most intentional of accidental touching, was like a jolt of electricity to his nerves.

He remembers promises and warnings, a glance here, the pressure of a hand there, things held captive in the curve of a smile, the raise of an eyebrow, the blush of a cheek.

He remembers warmth and heat, wetness and friction, remembers eyes and lips and fingers and tongues, skin on skin on skin…

He remembers growing comfortable with it all, surprising himself with the sense that this was OK, that it was simply an indicator of the deepening of their love, that they could be so open with each other, so relaxed, no longer needing to be so frantic and desperate in their coupling.

He remembers all this but what he can't remember is when it all started to become nothing. When a touch became simply warm flesh against his own. When a kiss was merely lips pressed together. When his orgasm became so much harder to chase, and so much less satisfying when he caught up with it. When his heart disengaged from the act of lovemaking and left his head and his sensory nerves the only active participants.

He had taken to fantasising when he was with Zayn, trying to keep his head in the game, to not let on there is anything wrong. It vaguely disquiets him, makes him feel like he is cheating on Zayn somehow, even though he is not involved with anyone else. He strongly senses that he is doing Zayn an injustice, that Zayn deserves something more than this, deserves someone who can love him the way he should be loved. The way Liam is no longer capable of loving him.

He sighs, closing his eyes and willing his brain to switch off. The tick of the clock in the kitchen is loud in the silence but it’s like a lullaby, rhythmic, gentle, with Zayn’s breathing coming in counterpoint.

He thinks of the first time they’d finally gotten together, how clumsy they’d been, so eager, so keen it was nearly a disaster. How they’d looked at each other in the aftermath, eyelids fluttering closed, limbs loose and sprawling, and they’d smiled. Shy, secret smiles, a tentative exchange of hearts.

And Liam had thought that it meant forever because he was young, naïve and in love. Because he hadn’t yet learned that love can die, like the rose in the vase on his mother’s mantel, faded, withered, brittle and dry, only traces of its former glory remaining.

Liam knows now. Knows that the songs lie. Knows that there is no happy ever after.

He thinks it's both funny and sad that people worry about girls getting caught up in princess dreams where fairy tales come true but what they don't realise, or don't want to admit, is that boys dream too. And even if they don't believe in the idea of the prince rescuing the princess and riding off into the sunset, even when they'd prefer it to be two princes meeting for a drink at the local and seeing if there is anything between them, even if they profess that they don't believe in happy ever after because they are grown men for gods' sake and that's all such a sack of bullshit anyway, the fact of the matter is that there is still a part of them, however small it might be, that hopes and dreams and wishes and wants. To be the exception.

*

The splash of something warm and wet hitting his top lip after dripping off his nose alerts him to the fact that he's crying and he dashes the tears from his cheeks angrily. He's not one for big displays of emotion, he's never been sentimental, and he doesn't want this now, doesn't need it. Crying is not going to change anything and it's not going to get him anywhere. And he's not sad, so he doesn't even know why he's crying. He's just so tired.

Tired of pretending, of faking it, of keeping up the illusion. Tired of the slow death he's dying here. Tired of the way he is killing whatever love remains in Zayn.

He rubs his hand over his face, tucks it beneath his cheek and breathes out, long and tremulous. Breathe in, hold, breathe out, breathe in, hold, breathe out. Wash, rinse, repeat. Whatever it takes to help him fall asleep. He feels curiously cocooned here, in the soft warmth of this bed that no longer holds any comfort for him. He pulls the sheet up higher around his neck, adjusts his shoulder, shifts his leg.

The edges of his thinking begin to get fuzzy, sleep finally catching up with him, and there is a gently aching numbness, akin to trying to think through clouds of candy floss. Liam knows that sleep is no guarantee of escape, he's just as likely to dream about Zayn as not, but at least it holds a kind of oblivion for a few hours and maybe, while he's asleep, he'll finally be able to breathe.


End file.
